I have recently bought 2 books from Fictionwise which are PDF with DRM.

Firstly, I seem only to be able to open them in ADE and then when I try to print I am told that I can only print 90 pages (was going to print to pdf).

Normally I wouldn't mind, but when opening on my Sony 505, the text is too small. When I make it bigger, it loses the nice formatting.

I have looked around but found no real answer as to how I may be able to remove the DRM. I have tried a demo of copistar, but this doesn't seem convert to text meaning I couldn't get it to a better format.

So, any advice on how I can get the file to a better format? Being that the 2 books I have bought run into around 600 pages each, I don't want to be doing a load of manual work so anything automated would be great.

Is there a format that I should be buying to make my own life easier? As previously mentioned, I have a sony 505.

I have also bought epub which looks great on my 505 although there are some things I wanted to change but can't due to DRM. I can live with that though.

With the PDF files, it is much harder for me to 'deal' with the problems.

The Adobe DRM has not been cracked, and you have already tried the only ways I am aware of for extracting the contents (printing, if allowed, and screenshots automated via copistar).

The DRM of three popular formats (MOBI, LIT, eReader) has been cracked, and Calibre will format shift DRM-free ebooks in any of these formats to ePub (or LRF). Of these, LIT is the closest to ePub and is what I would recommend if you have a Windows PC (MS Reader and Internet Explorer are required to buy LIT ebooks).

The DRM of three popular formats (MOBI, LIT, eReader) has been cracked,

With respect, the DRM has not been "cracked" - that would imply the ability to remove DRM without knowing the encryption key, and that hasn't happened.

What has happened with these three formats is that, given a known encryption key (eg the PID for a Mobi file), the action of the legitimate reader for the formats has been "reverse engineered", allowing tools to be written which produce a DRM-free version of the file. The key point is, though, that in order for this to be done, the encryption key has to be known.

Is there any software similar to copistar that will read to a text format? Seems that copistar is an image. Alternatively, is there any software that can read a pdf containing images and convert to text (similar to a scanner but from screen)

If it works by taking "screenshots", it cannot see text, it can only see the "image" that's on the screen. But I guess nothing prevents you to process the resulting image with an OCR software, to convert the images into text.

With respect, the DRM has not been "cracked" - that would imply the ability to remove DRM without knowing the encryption key, and that hasn't happened.

What has happened with these three formats is that, given a known encryption key (eg the PID for a Mobi file), the action of the legitimate reader for the formats has been "reverse engineered", allowing tools to be written which produce a DRM-free version of the file. The key point is, though, that in order for this to be done, the encryption key has to be known.

The term "cracked" has been commonly used for defeating DRM systems by whatever means. For example, DeCSS was said to "crack" CSS DVDs even though it was essentially "reverse engineered" DVD player software including the player key necessary for decryption. The encryption used in that case was so weak that it actually was cracked in the stronger sense, but only after DeCSS was available.

I would describe the external keys required by ebook DRM schemes as much more like public keys than private keys. You need the key for decryption, but on its own it isn't sufficient for decryption and it isn't a secret. The private keys are inside the reader software, and these are necessarily included in any DeDRM software as well. This is the sense that ebook DRM removing software "cracks" the DRM encryption.

Well, I Have bought copistar and 'read' the first book (664 pages) which has left me with a 237Mb pdf. I am now running this through ABBYY FineReader in the hope that it will convert it successfully to text. If not then it is a lesson learned!

With respect, the DRM has not been "cracked" - that would imply the ability to remove DRM without knowing the encryption key, and that hasn't happened.

Hmm. I think I would disagree with you. DRM does mean "digital rights management" -- software enforcing restrictions placed on content by the copyright holder. This only works if the content operates purely within a sandbox which recognizes these restrictions, which means that a DRM system must keep the content within the sandbox in order to work. Figuring out how to "release" the content from the sandbox circumvents the purpose of the DRM, and to my mind constitutes a "crack" in the system.

Well, I Have bought copistar and 'read' the first book (664 pages) which has left me with a 237Mb pdf. I am now running this through ABBYY FineReader in the hope that it will convert it successfully to text. If not then it is a lesson learned!

If you have Adobe Acrobat then do use Adobe's OCR engine and be sure to select "ClearScan" option. It'll make you file much more readable and much smaller -- I'm getting 8-15 mb on average.